from www.villagevoice.com Tomcat (his professional name) is the resident director for Fucking Machines, a porn site dedicated entirely to women having sex with metal partners who plug into the wall.

One of many sub-sites at alternative porn giant Kink.com, Fucking Machines is filmed in San Francisco, where Tomcat leads a shoot at least once weekly. Operating under the tagline “Sex at 350 RPM,” he serves up video after video of women mounting large, noisy, electric toys that serve the primary purpose of thrusting dildos of various girth into his performers.

“In the fusion of female sexuality and technology,” says Voice sex blogger Audacia Ray on the topic of fucking machines in her book Naked on the Internet, “the curious and enthralling thing about these toys is the way in which they cast sexuality and technology together in a near miasma of technophobia and technofetishism.” They take all the anxiety men feel about being replaced by vibrators, and turn that fear into a turn-on by blowing the premise entirely out of proportion. For Tomcat though, who started at Kink.com as a PA, sex with machines is more about technojoy―specifically the joy of tech-induced orgasms―than technofear.

Q: So how did Fucking Machines get started?

A: It started back in 2000 and was the second site for Kink.com. The CEO Peter Acworth saw a fucking machine on a website and just thought it was the coolest thing ever. You could see a girl getting shagged and having a great orgasm and there was no guy’s ass in the way. Supposedly there was no one else in the room: just her and the machine. So he started buying up sex machines, whatever he could find. It was so novel at the time that the site took off.

Q: Now that there are other sites with fucking machines―for example, BangingMachines.com―do you guys still feel you offer something different?

A: I think we’re innovators. We have mostly custom machines, and that’s what separates us from everybody else. We do use some commercial machines but for the most part they’re all custom made. Sometimes it’s members who send in machines, sometimes it’s our very talented shop crew. We’re not manufacturing anything. We only make them once and we make them for our site only.

Q: Where do ideas come from for new machines?

A: From my head, or from other people who run the site. It’s not that hard. You can pretty much find a fucking machine in every everyday appliance. We have a modified blender, a modified saw. We used to have one that was made of lawnmower but we could only use it outside and it was very loud.

Q: Is there a favorite machine, either for you or for your performers?

A: Yeah, we have a giant robot that’s a replica of Johnny Five. He’s definitely a crowd-pleaser. Personally I like the Fucksall, because it’s handheld and you can kind of work with the girl. The girls really like it too… Sometimes the girl picks which machines to work with, if she’s shot with me before or has a favorite. Most of the time I pick out the machines.

Q: What are you going for when you decide which machine to work with?

A: The best orgasm ever. It also depends what the girl is comfortable with. If she’s new you have to warm her up to the idea of fucking a machine. In general, the idea is to create a fetish experience that causes uncontrollable orgasms. Kink.com has several sites and most of them are BDSM sites: rope bondage, dominant play and that kind of thing. I usually get girls who don’t want to do that kind of stuff. Some are local girls, some are agent calls from LA―porn stars. They come from all walks of life.

Q: What do you think appeals to your performers about working for Fucking Machines?

A: It’s a solo site and the goal is to make you feel good. It’s what makes you feel good. I think normally in porn it’s not about the woman having fun and Fucking Machines changes that. We also have girls who it’s their first time, and that’s always a lot of fun. It’s your first time shooting porn ever and you’ve got this giant blender.

Q: Ok, what’s it really like to have sex with a machine?

A: People think it’s pretty intimidating, but it has its own fetish in that sense. It is a pretty powerful device and it is a machine. It has gears and motors and everything just like a regular machine. But it doesn’t stop. It never gets tired. Unless you have a power outage, that thing is going to just keep going. Sometimes the girls control the machine, and sometimes I do―because if I leave the models in control they get so into what they’re doing they forget to really work with the machines. Also having me drive the machine adds a human element to the inhuman.

Q: And what about your viewers? What’s the appealing to them about Fucking Machines as opposed to other types of porn?

A: The appeal is that it’s not porno. It’s not girls making eyes at the camera and pretending. They’re encouraged to relax, be themselves. There’s also the fetish of the machine itself. For me it’s about cold steel on hot flesh: this really sexy girl with this bulky, dominating piece of machinery, and she’s going to have her way with it.

Q: Has anything ever gone wrong with the machinery on set?

A: One machine overheats. It’s a computer and I’ve had someone on it so long that it overheated and stopped. Besides that, the most sensational things are the wild orgasms–girls on machines being like, “Holy shit, I forgot all you guys were here.”